Southern Nebraska Register
Our Lady of Good Counsel Retreat House in Waverly will host a “Back to the Garden” retreat April 19-21, led by Father Cole Kennett and Sarina Stokes.
Young adult women are invited to the retreat to “encounter the masculine Heart of Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom, and the restoration He has in store for your feminine identity.”
“You were made for Heaven,” Stokes said. “You were made for Jesus. You were made to walk in the garden of your heart with Him.
Father Kennett said Jesus reveals that each part and place in each person is good, “and He enters in to reveal any place bound by darkness and shame as the focus of His personal love.
The retreat weekend will entail a “re-writing” of each retreatant’s personal story, in light of the redeeming love of Jesus Christ.
Pulling from the wisdom of Pope St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body,” the poetic love story of the Song of Songs, and personal testimony, women will come to encounter the beauty within themselves and the truth of who they are and Whose they are, Christ’s.
Check-in for the retreat is 6 p.m. Friday, April 19, with the retreat starting at 7 p.m. with charcuterie. The retreat concludes Sunday, April 21, at 1 p.m. Stokes said women are asked to bring their “beautiful Sunday best for women’s brunch, as the retreat is topped off celebrating the ‘Wedding Feast of the Lamb.’”
Father Kennett was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Lincoln in 2017. He is pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Colon and St. Mary in Cedar Bluffs. He also teaches moral theology at Bishop Neumann High School in Wahoo.
Stokes is the outreach and ministry coordinator at Our Lady of Good Counsel Retreat House and a current graduate student at the University of Mary’s applied Catholic theology program. An Arizona native, she served as a FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) missionary for two years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
For more information or registration, visit goodcounselretreat.org, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 402-786-2705.
Other upcoming retreats at Our Lady of Good Counsel are a Holy Week retreat for young women with the Marian Sisters March 28-30; four-, five- or eight-day Ignatian directed retreats March 25-28 or May 3-10; and a women’s retreat with Janette Howe of Seven Sisters May 10-11.
